Improving Reading Skills: Contemporary Readings for College Students - Brossura

Spears, Deanne

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0073407313 ISBN 13: 9780073407319

Casa editrice: McGraw Hill, 2012

Riassunto

Now in its 7th edition, Improving Reading Skills features a wide variety of carefully chosen readings that engage, encourage, and challenge students. Ideal for introductory and intermediate developmental reading courses, this new edition has been thoroughly revised and now includes two new parts, expanded part introductions, an even broader range of levels for the reading selections, increased emphasis on annotating, paragraphing, and summarizing, and a new section in part five.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Deanne Spears is originally from Portland, Oregon. She now considers herself a native Californian, having moved to Los Angeles when freeways and smog were relatively new concepts. During her childhood and adolescence, she spent carefree summers i na small farming community in northwest Iowa. After receiving a B.A. and an M.A. in comparative literature from the University of Southern California, she began teaching composition and reading at City College of San Francisco. She continues to tutor students in reading and composition and to conduct teacher-preparation workshops for the college. In addition to her primary interests - reading and studying Italian - she and her husband David enjoy cooking, watching movies (there are over 100 titles in their Netflix queue), kayaking in Princeton Harbor, camping (especially in the Gold Lakes Basin area of Northern California), and searching out inexpensive ethnic restaurants. Deanne is the author of Improving Reading Skills (7th edition, 2013) and, with David Spears, In Tandem: College Reading and Writing (2007), also published by McGraw-Hill.

Contenuti:

Contents

Preface

To the Student

Improving Your Vocabulary

Five Techniques for Acquiring Words

Using Context Clues

Using Print and Online Dictionaries

Practice Selection

Dave Barry

Tips for Women: How to Have a Relationship with a Guy

We’re not talking about different wavelengths here. We’re talking about different planets, in completely different solar systems. Elaine cannot communicate meaningfully with Roger about their relationship any more than she can meaningfully play chess with a duck. Because the sum total of Roger’s thinking on this particular topic is as follows: Huh?

Comprehension Worksheet

Part 1 Getting Started: Practicing the Basics

Identifying the Main Idea and Writer’s Purpose

The Difference Between Fiction and Nonfiction

The Difference Between an Article and an Essay

Identifying the Main Idea in Paragraphs

Implied Main Ideas

Thesis Statements in Articles and Essays

Identifying the Writer’s Purpose

1. David Sedaris, Hejira

It wasn't anything I had planned on, but at the age of twenty-two, after dropping out of my second college and traveling across the country a few times, I found myself back in Raleigh, living in my parents' basement. After six months spent waking at noon, getting high, and listening to the same Joni Mitchell record over and over again. I was called by my father into his den and told to get out.

2. Sherman Alexie, Superman and Me

A smart Indian is a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike. I fought with my classmates on a daily basis. They wanted mc to stay quiet when the non-Indian teacher asked for answers, for volunteers. for help. We were Indianchildren who were expected to be stupid. Most lived up to those expectations inside the classroom but subverted them on the outside.

3. Joe Abbott, To Kill a Hawk

It was the summer of 1971, and a dozen friends and I had driven down the breathtakingly steep and tortuous road into Shelter Cove in southern Humboldt County to camp on the black sand beaches. We were pretty young then, and ill-prepared, and we quickly gobbled down our meager food supplies. So I and a couple others went down into the cove to poach abalones among the rocks.

4. Rose Guilbault, School Days

“What is that?” Mona scrunched her nose at my doll. “Don’t you have a Barbie?” The other girls twittered. What was a Barbie? I wondered. And why was my doll looked down on? I felt embarrassed and quickly stuffed my unworthy toy back into the paper bag. I would not be invited to play with them again.

5. Colby Buzzell, Johnny Get Your Textbook (blog)

The first day on campus brought back flashbacks. Not of the war, but of high school andmy first day of basic training when I was absolutely convinced that I had made the biggestmistake of my life. I found myself spending the majority of my free time asking god please. "Turn me into a bird so I can fly far, far away."

6. John Bussey, Old Hat for the New Normal

"Dad," I teased, "a box of fresh donuts from just $2.50! How can you pass up a deal likethat?" "That's nothing," he said. "Wait until tomorrow when they're a day child, they'll be a buck and a quarter."

Part 2 Refining the Basics

Annotating, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

Annotating

Paraphrasing

Summarizing

7. Caroline Hwang, The Good Daughter

My parents didn't want their daughter to be Korean, but they don't want her fully American, either. Children of immigrants are living paradoxes.

8. Studs Terkel, Somebody Built the Pyramids

Mike Fitzgerald . . . is a laborer in a steel mill. "I feel like the guys who built the pyramids, Somebody built'em. Somebody built the Empire State Building, too. There's hard work behind it. I would like to see a building, say The Empire State, with a footwidestrip from top to bottom and the name of every bricklayer on it, the name of every electrician. So when a guy walked by, he could take his son and say, 'See, that's me overthere on the 45th floor. I put that steel beam in."'

9. Sherry Turkle, The Nostalgia of the Young

One high school senior recalls a time when his father used to sit next to him on the couch, reading. "He read for pleasure and didn't mind being interrupted." But when his father, a doctor, switched from books to his BlackBerry, things became less clear. "He could beplaying a game or looking at a patient record, and you would never know... He is in that same BlackBerry zone."

10. Elizabeth Bernstein, How Facebook Ruins Friendships

Notice to my friends. I love you all dearly.But I don't give a hoot that you are "having a busy Monday," your child "took 30 minutes to brush his teeth," your dog "just ate an ant trap" or you want to "save the piglets." And I really, really don't care which Addams Family member you most resemble.

11. Chris Rose, Hell and Back

For all of my adult life, I regarded depression and anxiety as pretty much a load of hooey. I never accorded any credibility to the idea that they are medical conditions. Nothing scientific about it. You get sick, get fired, fall in love, get laid, buy a new pair of shoes, join a gym, get religion, seasons change, whatever; you go with the flow, dust yourself off, get back in the game. I thought antidepressants were for desperate housewives and fragile poets.

12. Virginia Morell, Minds of Their Own

Many of Alex's cognitive skills, such as his ability to understand the concepts of same and different, are generally described only to higher mammals' parlicularly primates. But parrots, like great apes (and humans), live a long time in complex societies. And likeprimates, these birds must keep track of the dynamics of changing relationships and environments.”

13. Olivia Wu, Alfresco Marriage Market

Sitting on a bench with his sign resting on his half--bared chest, shirt unbuttoned in thesweltering heat, he says the son he is trying to marry off is his last-"1976, Year of the Dragon, 1.74 meters," a computer engineer, 3,000 RMB ($375 monthly salary), seeking a female 2 to 3 years younger with an associate degree."

Part 3 Tackling More Challenging Prose

Making Inferences

14. Carla Rivera, From Illiterate to Role Model

Even now, [Eileen, his wife] said, it's hard for her to believe his reading ability was so limited. "He just seemed to do fine," she said. "He learned to compensate. If we went to a restaurant, he [already] knew what to order off a menu or he could tell by the pictures. When he couldn't, he would just order a hamburger."

15. John Schwartz, Extreme Makeover: Criminal Court Edition

When John Ditullio goes on trial on Monday, jurors will not see the large swastika tattooedon his neck. Or the crude insult tattooed on the other side of his neck. Or anv of the other markings he has acquired since being jailed on charges related to a double stabbing that wounded a woman and killed a teenager in 2006.

16. "The Waiter" (Steve Dublanica), Why Be a Waiter

Quite a few waiters have lives that are train wrecks. A famous chef once observed that therestaurant business is a haven for people who don't fit in anywhere else. That's true. The restaurant business can be like the French Foreign Legion-without the heavy weaponry.

17. Steve Striffler, Undercover in a Chicken Factory

I learn quickly that "unskilled" labor requires immense skill. The job of hariner is ertremely complicated. In a simple sense the harinero empties 5O-pound bags of-flour allday.The work is backbreaking, but it takes less physical dexterity than many other jobs on the line. At the same time, the job is multifaceted and cannot be quickly learned. The harinero adiusts the breader and rebreader, monitors the marinade, turns the power on andoff, and replaces old flour with fresh flour. All this would be relatively manageable if the lines ran well. They never do.

18. Martin Lindstrom, Fear and Ice Chips: Selling Illusions of Cleanliness

Knowing that even the suggestion of fruit evokes powerful associations of health, freshnessand cleanliness, brands across all categories have gone fruity on us, infusing everything from shampoos to bottled waters with pineapple, oranges, peaches, passion fruit andbanana fragrances-engineered in a chemist's laboratory, of course.

19. Lawrence Shames, The Hunger for More

Americans have always been optimists, and optimists have always liked to speculate. In Texas in the 1880s, the speculative instrument of choice was towns, and there is no tale more American than this. What people would do was buy up enormous tracts of parched and vacant land, lay out a Main Street, nail together some wooden sidewalks, and start slapping up buildings. . . . The developers would erect a flagpole and name a church, and once the workmen had packed up and moved on, the town would be as empty as the sky.

20. Val Plurnwood. Being Prey: Surviving a Crocodile Attack

When the whirling terror stopped again I surfaced again, still in the crocodile's grip next to a stout branch of a large sandpaper fig growing in the water. I grabbed the branch, vowing to let the crocodile tear me apart rather than throw me again into that spinning, suffocating hell. For the first time I realized that the crocodile was growling. as if angry.

Part 4 Mastering Reading about Complex Ideas

Patterns of Development

Patterns of Development

List of Facts or Details

Examples

Reasons - Cause and Effect

Description of a Process

Contrast

Transitional Elements

Some Final Considerations

21. Debra Dickerson, Raising Cain

. . . I just mean to say that children primarily meant to me that I’d always be taking care of someone, a fate too many women accept as given. When you grow up a poor black girl in a huge family you spend your life caring for the whole world. Children, I knew, meant that I’d be a human mop and short-order cook forever.

22. Tamara Lush, Living Inside a Virtual World

ln 2007, Van Cleave had three different World of Warcraft accounts (each at a cost of $14.95 a month). A secret Paypal account paid for two of the accounts so his wife wouldn't hound him about the cost. He spent $224 in real money to buy fake gold, so he could get an in-game "epic-level sword" and some "top-tier armor" for his avatar. Changes in Van Cleave's personality began to appear.

23. Dan Ariely, The Problem of Procrastination and Self-Control

As a university professor, I'm all too familiar with procrastination. At the beginnilg of ever),semester my students make heroic promises to themselves-vowing to read their assignments on time, submit their papers on time, and in general, stay on top of things. Andevery semester I've watched as temptation takes them out on a date, over to the student union for a meeting, and off on a ski trip in the mountains-while their workload falls farther and farther behind. In the end, they wind up impressing me, not with their punctualitv, but with their creativity-inventing stories, excuses, and family tragedies to erplain their tardiness.

24. Carlin Flora, Hello, My Name Is Unique

Increasingly, children are also named for prized possessions. In 2000, birth certificates revealed that there were 298 Armanis, 269 Chanels, 49 Canons, 6 Timberlands, 5 Jaguars and 353 girls named Lexus in the U.S.

25. Marc Ian Barasch, Why Do We Walk On By?

My panhandling skills are nil. Each rejection feels like a body blow. I can see the little comic-strip thought balloon spring from people's brows- Get a job! I work!

26. Stephanie Banchero and Stephanie Simon, My Teacher Is an App

Noah and Allison Schnacky, aspiring actors who travel frequently, initially chose Florida Virtual for its flexibility. Noah says that he likes expressing his thoughts at the keyboard, alone in his room, instead of in a crowded class. But there are downsides. After fallingbehind in algebra, he tried to set up a 15-minute call with his teacher. She was booked solid-for a month.

27. Jared Diamond, Easter's End

As ve try to imagine the decline of Easter [Island's] civilization, we ask ourselves, "Why didn't they look around, realize what they were doing, and stop before it was too ...

Su questa edizione

• Editore: McGraw Hill
• Data di pubblicazione: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0073407313
• ISBN 13: 9780073407319
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 496